Who Owns Fox News?

Fox News Channel launched on October 7, 1996, in approximately 17 million cable homes, positioned by its founders as a conservative alternative to what Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes characterized as a liberal bias in mainstream television news. Murdoch, the Australian-born media mogul who had built News Corporation into a global media empire, provided the financial backing and strategic vision. Ailes, a veteran Republican political consultant who had worked on the presidential campaigns of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush, served as founding chairman and CEO and shaped the network's programming philosophy, talent recruitment, and on-air presentation.

The network's early years were challenging. CNN had a 16-year head start, and MSNBC had launched just weeks before Fox News in July 1996. Fox News was available in far fewer homes than its competitors and struggled to attract viewers in its first years. Ailes responded by investing heavily in opinion programming, particularly in prime time, building shows around strong personalities with explicitly conservative viewpoints. Bill O'Reilly's "The O'Reilly Factor," which launched with the network in 1996, became the anchor of Fox News's prime-time lineup and eventually the highest-rated cable news program in the United States.

Fox News surpassed CNN in the cable news ratings in January 2002, a milestone it has maintained with few interruptions since. The network's coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the subsequent War on Terror resonated strongly with its audience, and the network's ratings advantage over CNN and MSNBC widened through the 2000s. By the mid-2000s, Fox News was consistently attracting more viewers in prime time than CNN and MSNBC combined, a dominance that reflected both the network's programming effectiveness and the concentration of conservative viewers on a single cable news outlet.

The network's influence on American political discourse grew substantially during the Obama administration (2009 to 2017), when Fox News served as the primary media platform for conservative opposition to the administration's policies. The network's coverage of the Tea Party movement, the Affordable Care Act debate, and other political controversies drove ratings to new highs and cemented Fox News's position as the most influential media outlet in American conservative politics.

Roger Ailes resigned as Fox News chairman and CEO in July 2016 following sexual harassment allegations from multiple women, including former anchor Gretchen Carlson. Ailes died in May 2017. His departure prompted a significant restructuring of Fox News's leadership and talent roster, with Bill O'Reilly also departing in April 2017 following his own harassment settlements. Despite these disruptions, Fox News maintained its ratings leadership, with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham anchoring the prime-time lineup.

In March 2023, Fox News settled a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million, the largest known defamation settlement in U.S. media history. The lawsuit arose from Fox News's coverage of the 2020 presidential election, during which the network aired claims that Dominion's voting machines had been manipulated to change votes. Internal communications revealed during the litigation showed that Fox News executives and anchors privately doubted the claims they were broadcasting. Tucker Carlson departed Fox News in April 2023, shortly after the Dominion settlement. Despite this significant legal and reputational event, Fox News's ratings remained strong, and the network continued to lead cable news in viewership through 2024 and 2025.